What do you do?

Isn't the law field also notorious for being selective by only hiring people out of top schools? Like if you get your law degree from a middle of the road college you may as well not have gotten it at all? Or is that just a myth I've heard.

So many people go into law school thinking it's some insta-ticket to wealth when you graduate, then find out that their tier 3 law school where they amassed over 150K in student debt just landed them a career job at Robert Half making $20/hr doing e-doc review. Once a year or so we need a legal swat team to do mass document review, and we bring in a team of vagabond lawyers from Robert Half to do it. Some of these lawyers graduated 15 years ago and are basically making a teacher's wage and are loaded to the gills with student debt. Sad.

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

So many people go into law school thinking it's some insta-ticket to wealth when you graduate, then find out that their tier 3 law school where they amassed over 150K in student debt just landed them a career job at Robert Half making $20/hr doing e-doc review. Once a year or so we need a legal swat team to do mass document review, and we bring in a team of vagabond lawyers from Robert Half to do it. Some of these lawyers graduated 15 years ago and are basically making a teacher's wage and are loaded to the gills with student debt. Sad.

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Yeah, I always LOL when I see people studying their ass off to be lawyers and then make shit.

It's like WOOT! I'm a real estate lawyer working on closings! FUCK YEAH MAKING CHANGE HAPPEN.

I'm not a lawyer, but from the outside it looks like 90% of the job is paperwork. The really great, high end law jobs focus on that remaining 10%.

Cad_sl said:

Uhh... no. The really great high end law jobs are 99.99% paperwork. The guys you see in the county and state courts day in and day out, are the dregs. Insurance lawyers and plaintiffs personal injury lawyers by the boatload.

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mmm Ambulance Chasers.

Cad_sl said:

The way partners at big firms make tons of money is by having great clients who trust them. These guys spend time with the clients (in the case of companies, the general counsels and the C-titles) and generally have good close personal relationships with them.

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This is what I meant by the other 10%. Relationship building.

I know a lot of people here come from IT backgrounds (goes with the territory of being gaming nerds after all) but if anyone is thinking of career changes then Accounting really isn't all that bad. While I was working in Accounting at a bank, one of the Senior VPs once told me that Accounting is a great field because every company needs them.

For the most part Accounting is pretty stable income and job security. There's always going to be turnover and that gets worse in a failing company but like that VP told me "Everyone needs Accountants." Pay is decent. You won't be starting at 6 figures but you can easily make 40, 50, 60, 70K+ depending on your education, experience and role. Being a government drone I've got it mapped out where I'll be making over 60K next year and if I continue on track I'll be making over 70K two to three years down the road and retire around 100K a year (at today's rates which will increase as time goes on). By no means do I consider myself rich but my wife's an RN and makes about 45K a year with no kids. We're very comfortable. Like I said, the money is solid but don't go in expecting to be making 6 figures.

If you go the CPA route it's very difficult and challenging but it's an awesome feeling of accomplishment to pass the thing. And with the whole baby boomer issue going on they project something like one quarter to a third of the current CPAs to retire in the next few years making for huge demand for the credential. Big 4 Accounting is a young man's game (typically 60+ hours during busy season) but if you've got experience elsewhere you can skip that whole route (like I did) and still make good money. We are in huge demand and those 3 letters carry a ton of respect in the business world. Even in my lazy government drone position I noticed a big change in how people have treated me since I earned those letters. And being a CPA is what puts me on track to get to that 70K+ Job Grade in two to three years. Even if you don't actually do Accounting, just being a CPA will get you noticed. With that said passing the exam is one of the hardest things I've done. I was studying everyday two to three hours on work nights and another 6 to 8 hours each day on the weekends. For 10 months that was my life. So you might not actually do Accounting to make the CPA title worthwhile but you still need to be able to learn it to pass the exam.

Cad_sl said:

Ok then thats like the other .0000001% the job is still 99.99% paperwork. And conference calls. Lots of conference calls.

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Fuuuuuck I hate conference calls. Waste of goddamn time.

Cad_sl said:

Sure but you can bill for it, and browse rerolled at the same time... *unmutes phone, says "I agree", bills .8 hour*

Hee hee

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I use them as an excuse to either beat traffic that day or work from my home office. If I'm spending 3-4 hours on the phone, I'm not going to bother sitting in traffic when I'll lock myself in an office anyway.

When I was a systems engineer I was on conference calls for like 6 out of the 8 hours I worked everyday. Never again.

The worst are the pre-call calls. First you need to get 3 or 4 people on the phone to strategize for an hour about the upcoming call with another 3 or 4 people.

Cad_sl said:

Ours aren't that long, usually not more than an hour. Usually .5-.9 hour. Unless it's something I'm actively involved in I'll usually work on something else while listening.

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My Wednesday consists of a 9am-10:30, a 1-2, and a 4-5. There's almost, but not quite, enough time in between to get real work done.

Yeah but we do real work, we aren't lawyers